The inkjet printing technology has been used in many years. As the printers become popular, the amount of cartridge usage also increases. The environmental impact and the related recycling issues of disposable cartridge also becomes a problem.
In general, a cartridge is disposable when the cartridge stops supplying ink to the printer. Usually, at this point, there remains a small amount of ink inside the cartridge, which is both a waste and a pollution. A refillable cartridge is developed to decrease the waste and the pollution caused by a conventional disposable cartridge. A refillable cartridge can be refilled with ink using a funnel. However, the design is prone to causing spill or overflow of ink during the refilling. In addition, the user must watch for the ink level to prevent from using up the ink. During the refilling, the printing must be stopped. An alternative is to use a pump to replace the manual refilling. Unfortunately, the cost of the plural pumps and supporting frame, the time-consuming assembly and disassembly of frame, bulky size and high power-consumption are some of the disadvantages of the pump refilling approach.